Guided Relaxation Exercises

Transcript

Hi, I'm Lisa Dawn Angerame. I'm one of the founding partners of Nava NYC. A collective of nine yoga and meditation teachers in New York City. Our website is www.navanyc.com. Today I will be talking to you about meditation.

Guided relaxation exercises are a great way to calm yourself down before you practice meditation. So for five or ten minutes you can employ one of these three tools to bring a sense of calm before you sit on your cushion.

So the first one is to lay in goddess pose. Lay down on your back, bend your knees into your chest, open your knees wide, and place your feet together. Relax your hands by your side with your palms facing up. Feel your body relaxing into the floor, relaxing your back, allowing your knees to continue to feel weighted down. Your hips start to open and you start to feel a release. Allow that release to come over your body so that your hips are more open and your heart is more open. So that you can sit up and take your meditation practice with an open heart. You can stay in this pose for three to five minutes.

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The next pose you can do to relax yourself before meditation is legs up the wall. It's exactly what it sounds like, legs up the wall. So come to lie on your back close to the wall, inch your side up to the wall with your seat against the wall. And then turn your legs up so that your feet are up against the wall and your seat is up against the wall as well. Your back is on the floor, your hands are by your side, your palms are facing up, and close your eyes. Just feel how your legs start to feel lighter. All the energy of the day that you're standing on your legs starts to release into the earth, and you start to relax.

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Another guided relaxation exercise you can is shabatsana, it means corpse pose. You lay down on the earth, relaxing with your arms out to your side, palms facing up, your legs a little bit open with your feet tilted out to the side. Your eyes closed and just calmly laying and relaxing. Allowing the stress or the anxiety of the day to release out of you and into the earth.